The Humanism of Evangelistic Apologetics

Synopsis

There is no part of the Bible or its doctrine, no part of true Christianity or its Lord, which has not been attacked with persistent fury by the Lord’s enemies. This is expected in a fallen world and has been the fact since the devil tempted Eve (“Indeed, has God said…?”).

What may not be expected is that the brunt of the attack on the Gospel of the Lord Christ is not from those who are His expressed enemies but from those who claim—falsely—to preach that Gospel in the name of that same Lord Christ!

2 Cor 11.13-15For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.

The purpose of this series is to reveal just how humanistic and corrupted the preaching of the Gospel has become in our "intellectual age". Evangelists are equally enamored with and deceived by our current state of rationalism and sense of moral and intellectual independence. Their writings show just how far they’ve drifted from a dependence upon the Lord they claim commissioned them for, essentially, complete dependence on their own intellect, methods, and ideologies. They provide consistent, stunning, and explicit and implicit evidence of just how embarrassed they are of the simple, pure message of “Repent, and believe the Gospel!”. Instead, they substitute an “intellectually appealing" and "intellectually safe” message, one carefully designed to not offend the lost. Rather, it is a message designed to attract the lost in all the wrong ways.

They present a “new gospel”, one which subtly encourages the lost to “contribute” to their own salvation through the so-called power of their own reason. This “new gospel”—the "gospel of evangelist apologetics"—and its methodology and message is nothing more or less than “another gospel” which was condemned nearly two millennia ago by the Holy Spirit of God speaking through the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians. Today’s preachers are accurately portrayed by Peter through this OT text:

2 Pet 2.22It has happened to them according to the true proverb, “A dog returns to its own vomit,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.”

Given the predominance and popularity of this “evangelist apologetics” methodology, it is no wonder that even our current, so-called conservative, evangelical churches are filled with the lost who have been made comfortable with their own false profession, a profession made because the lost thought that he/she was “smart enough” to be saved and not because they repented of their sin and came to the Lord Christ by grace through faith. (Eph 2.8-9)

I begin with a thorough biblical foundation of the key doctrines vital to true evangelism before critiquing and exposing the spectacular errors of the modern evangelistic apologist.This series is presented in 14 chapters: